On 13 October 2026, Cloud Ace India and Google Cloud brought business leaders together at the Google Gurgaon office for a CXO roundtable with one question at its heart: how do you take AI from a promising pilot to something your business relies on every day?
Around the table were leaders from manufacturing and other traditional industries. This was a conversation, not a presentation: open, practical and focused on what really gets in the way.
How the day unfolded
We kept the format simple so there was plenty of room to talk.
- Welcome. Vikas G. Pathak, Managing Director of Cloud Ace India, welcomed everyone to the room.
- The Google Cloud view. The Google Cloud team shared their perspective on Gemini Enterprise and agentic AI, and what they mean for enterprises like those in the room.
- The roundtable. In a moderated discussion, each leader shared their priorities, their challenges and their plans for cloud and AI.
- Pilot to production. Aniket Tayade, Senior AI Engineer at Cloud Ace India, led a session on taking enterprise AI from pilot to production, drawing on document-heavy workflows we have worked on with customers.
- High tea and networking. The conversations carried on over high tea.
What we heard
The businesses were different, but the same themes kept coming up.
- Time lost to "work about work". Skilled people spend hours chasing updates, re-keying data and coordinating by email instead of doing the work they were hired for.
- Knowledge locked away. Critical know-how sits in documents and in people's heads, and it is hard to find when it matters.
- Scattered data. Information is spread across ERP systems, spreadsheets and shop-floor systems that rarely talk to each other.
- Pilots that stall. A proof of concept can look impressive in a demo and still stall before it reaches production.
- Governance and trust. Leaders want AI that is properly governed and that keeps people in the loop.
None of these is purely a technology problem. They are about how work actually flows through a business, which is why a room of business leaders was the right place to talk about them.
Our takeaway: start small, prove it, then scale
If we had to sum up the conversation, it is that AI pays off when it is pointed at a real problem. Four principles stood out:
- Start with one painful, measurable workflow. Choose something your teams already complain about and that you can measure before and after.
- Ground AI in your own data. Answers are only as useful as the documents and systems behind them.
- Keep humans approving. Let AI do the legwork and let your people make the decisions that matter.
- Prove value in weeks, then scale. Quick, visible wins build the confidence, and the case, for going further.
Moments from the day
Thank you to Google Cloud for hosting us at the Google Gurgaon office, to Observe Now, our event partner, and to every leader who made time in a busy schedule to join the conversation.
Wondering where AI could take the weight off your own teams? Book a discovery session with us and we will help you find the first workflow worth fixing.
